Executive Envy

Updated Jan. 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

Here we go again, with one more round of financial journalism deploring the exorbitant, outrageous, immoral, offensive -- have we left out any adjectives? -- compensation of CEOs. The difference is that this time the government may not commit the kind of policy blunder that helps increase executive pay even more.

That's exactly what happened the last time Congress waded into this thicket of envy, capping the tax deductibility of...